Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how both desire and excess can corrupt human nature.
Theodore Parker's quote suggests that both the strong desire for wealth and the greed for more can lead to a hardening of the human heart, much like how extreme temperatures can damage flesh. He draws parallels between the destructive forces of famine and gluttony, arguing that both extremes can alienate individuals from their natural and compassionate instincts, ultimately making them more self-centered.
In practice
In a discussion about materialism during a seminar, this quote can illustrate the dangers of greed.
A democracy,- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.
The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, β it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.
No man is so great as mankind.
Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.
You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.
Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, in the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.
The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.
Perhaps the real point of life is simply to wear us down until we have no choice but to start abandoning our defenses. We learn that the way things are is simply the way they are meant to be right now, and then, suddenly, at long last, we catch a glimpse of the abundance in the moment--abundance even in the face of things falling apart.
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.
He who aims at making an entire and perfect oblation of himself, in addition to his will, must offer his understanding, which is a further and the highest degree of obedience.
He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with.
The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
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